“I have nothing to hide,” Mayor Rob Ford declared after Police Chief Bill Blair refused to say if a major guns and drug trafficking probe involves Ford or his office.

Asked if he is worried that his name will surface in Project Traveller, Ford told reporters at city hall Thursday: “They can investigate and you can do whatever you want . . . I have nothing to hide.”

He thanked police for “going into these places where there are guns and removing them off the street. That’s what you call good police work.”

Blair told a news conference that Thursday morning raids focused on Dixon Ave. apartments, producing 40 firearms, $3 million worth of drugs and new arrests that bring to 43 the number in the year-old probe.

Blair refused to say whether Ford is connected to the evidence, what was seized or how it was obtained, or to comment on that fact that police raided the home of a shooting victim who appears in a photo with homicide victim Anthony Smith and the mayor.

“All of the evidence has been secured and it will come out in court, where it belongs,” Blair said.

After news of the raids broke Thursday morning, Ford’s acting chief of staff, Earl Provost, called police asking for information. Police spokesman Mark Pugash said Provost was given information already made public.

Ford, again facing reporters outside his office, said: “You guys can’t get it through your thick skulls. I’ve already answered all these questions. I have nothing to do with this.”

But it wasn’t just reporters asking questions. Chatter about the raids buzzed around the chamber during a council session that featured exchanges hot-tempered even by Toronto city hall standards.

Councillor Jaye Robinson, fired by Ford from the executive committee earlier this week after urging him to either honestly answer questions or take a leave of absence, was not surprised that questions continue to swirl.

“The allegations and the events unfold, and there are indications that there is more to come, that this is escalating,” Robinson, a former manager in the city’s economic development department, told the Star.

“What transpired today is another example of why it’s essential for the mayor to clearly and definitively address the allegations or take a leave. I think Torontonians want and deserve answers.”

Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday told reporters that, while he does not believe the raids directly involve Mayor Ford, he hopes they turn up the 90-second cellphone video so questions about it can finally be put to rest.

“I’d love to see the video, yeah, I think it would settle things,” and it might not show what the reporters who saw it believe it does, he said.

Holyday said information in the media suggests the extensive raid was planned some time ago, and “that it has nothing do with Rob Ford . . .

“The only thing that connected the mayor to that building at all is that somebody phoned the mayor’s office and said that one of their neighbours was dealing drugs, would you stop it, and the mayor said, ‘Fine, I’ll turn it over to the police,’ and that’s what he did.”

Neither Ford nor his staff have confirmed that account, or that he passed such information to police.

Councillor Josh Matlow noted the mounting questions about the video’s content, why Ford was photographed outside a suspected drug house with two men who were later shot, if Ford indeed had long known an occupant of that house, and now, what police knew about the video and when.

“There is still a dark cloud hanging over city hall and at the heart of it is the mayor,” Matlow said. “I think it would be helpful to city council, residents and the mayor himself if he would respond fully and honestly to questions, so we can clear the air and move forward …

“When the mayor suggests that he has answered all the questions posed to him, we know that to be factually untrue. We all know there have been honest questions put to him and he has not replied with honest answers yet.”

At Queen’s Park, Premier Kathleen Wynne, who has been closely watching the controversy swirling around Toronto Mayor Rob Ford, was uncharacteristically tight-lipped on the police raids.

“I really can’t comment. I think we have to let the chief of police do his work,” Wynne told reporters Thursday.

“I can’t comment on the investigation, I haven’t seen all the information,” she said.

Under provincial law, it is virtually impossible for Wynne to remove Ford from office unless he is convicted of a serious crime.

With files from Star staff

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